White Privilege & Colour-Blindness

Two intertwined thoughts in this posting...

In 1990, in New Zealand, I was 'forced' to attend cultural sensitivity training when I went back to school (as an adult) to complete a broadcast journalism course...

The course was facilitated by a middle-aged hard core Maori man, who called it for what it was...

At first I was really resistant... my family had only been in New Zealand since the mid 60s, had not hurt anyone, taken their land, enslaved anyone, forced assimilation on anyone, engaged in cultural and ethnic genocide, used racist slurs - hell some of my best friends were Maori, Polynesian, French, Polish, Lebanese  so I wasn't racist blah, blah, blah...

Well, you know what?   My life and all the privileges myself and my family took for granted (including the chance to immigrate to New Zealand, to work damn hard, to buy a small piece of land and build a modest house, to enjoy a social welfare system, free education and health care etc) had been built on the back of land theft and exploitation... 

And yes, I was a part of the problem because I didn't realise/acknowledge that...

If you won't admit you are part of the problem, you cause the problem to persist...

 And no, there's no way for me to turn the clock back and undo what was done... No way for me to "pay back" what I've received in white privilege... 

But I can at least acknowledge it, own it and do my best to ameliorate the effects as they are being felt by those who have been exploited for generations...

Have you acknowledged your white privilege lately?

Or your relative African American privilege that was bought on the back of native land theft and genocide?

And how many of us are in the place where we don't see other people, especially children, from other backgrounds as anything other than American kids rather than First Peoples, or African American or Chinese or Vietnamese or Pacific Islander or Polish or whatever.

That says a lot about what is wrong with our approach... we all think we are not being racist when we are "colour blind", but that is racist in itself:

COLOR-BLIND RACISM IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AMERICA 

Color-blind racism has crystallized as the dominant racial ideology of the United States. Whites no longer need to utter the ugly racial epithets of the past, claim God made whites superior, or argue that minorities are inferior biological beings in order to keep them in a subordinated position. Instead, whites chastise minorities in a color-blind way and, by default, defend their racial privilege in a “now you see it, now you don’t fashion.” Color-blind racism is thus a formidable weapon to maintain white privilege.

Will color-blind racism increase in significance in the twenty-first century, or will Americans realize the continuing impact of racial stratification in their country? The trends, unfortunately, suggest that, if anything, color-blind racism is bound to become even more salient. For one thing, the Supreme Court may eliminate all forms of race-based policies (e.g., Affirmative Action, busing) as “discriminatory in reverse.” Such an outcome will underscore whites’ “we are beyond race” racial common sense. In addition, Congress may stop gathering racial statistics, because gathering them presumably racializes Americans. This will make it all but impossible to document racial gaps in income, education, occupations, and other areas. This would only eliminate racial inequality artificially. Finally, the United States is developing a plural racial order, a development that will further diffuse the salience of race. In the emerging racial order, a middle group of “honorary whites” will buffer racial conflict and become arduous defenders of color-blindness.

Hence, the United States may be on its way to becoming a land of racism without racists, where people formerly known as blacks, Latinos, and Asians will still lag well behind the people formerly known as whites. Yet this inequality, formerly known as racial, will no longer be interpreted as such because Americans will believe, like the character Pangloss in Voltaire’s novel Candide , that they live in the best of all possible worlds.

Color-Blind Racism - WHITE RACIAL ATTITUDES IN THE POST–CIVIL RIGHTS ERA, IN 21st CENTURY AMERICA